Mount Eerie takes nothing for granted

Recent albums confronting mortality from David Bowie, Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen seemed to make 2016 a high-water mark in grief. But none can approach Phil Elverum’s simple and intimate acoustic Mount Eerie set chronicling the death of his wife, Genevieve Castree, from pancreatic cancer. The 11 hushed tracks on A Crow Looked at Me feel almost too personal at times, as in the opening “Real Death,” when Elverum tells us “all poetry is done.” Elverum knows he must find new reasons to live for the sake of their daughter, and the songs written directly for her, such as “Swims” and “Crow,” carry the unbearable weight of the album. But as a whole, this eighth studio album from Mount Eerie holds the critical message that life offers important gifts, and that our continued existence must never be taken for granted.File next to: Bill Callahan, Eric’s Trip, Sun Kil Moon